The 'Best RSS Apps' section of Nokia's 2010 Calling All Innovator competition has been judged and a top 10 Ovi App Wizard apps (actually Web runtime widgets) listed, based on 'Innovativeness', 'Cumulative number of downloads on July 15th 2010' and 'Quality of marketing materials'. They're all covered below, with brief comments and screenshots, in case you should want to look any of them out(!).
One we all missed last week, but Nokia have released an updated version of their application suite for Ramadan. Following on from the acclaim of the 2009 release, this year Nokia have gathered everything under a single application. When we talk about Nokia reaching out to customers, this is a wonderful example. See below for details.
The Register’s Top Ten Essential Symbian Apps makes for a good list. I’m sure we could argue that there are some apps that should be there which aren’t, but that’s always the fun of these lists. The question might be what are your top ten apps? Let us know in the comments.
Canalys has just released a limited set of numbers for smartphone sales in Quarter 2, 2010, showing Nokia with a leading 38% marketshare across the world, with actual sales of its Symbian-based smartphones up 41% year on year. RIM's Blackberrys were second in terms of smartphone marketshare, with 18%, while Apple was at 13% worldwide. Android-powered smartphones made up a lot of the 'noise' in the analysis, split across a multitude of manufacturers, but showing very siginificant growth, as you'll see from the table below.
More significant news from the Samsung i8910 HD firmware scene, which is accelerating, amazingly, rather than slowing down. 'faenil' has organised a one-click installer for the Qt 4.7.0 beta2 libraries for non-Nokia smartphones such as the i8910 HD, in theory letting them install some of the new Qt apps (e.g. the superlative Orange Wednesdays). A quote and video from faenil below. In related news, HyperX is now finalising HX8 firmwares, including even more customisations and a fix for Samsung's longstanding Music player bugs (a video for which is also embedded below). It's all go... What do you mean, you don't own an i8910 HD?
There's a surprise release from arch-Samsung i8910 HD-modder HyperX and his helpers today, in that there's a brand new version of HX7 out this morning. In addition to all the other customisation and battery saving goodness in HX7, the QT 4.6.2 Symbian^3 QT libaries are now integrated - seems like this device is edging towards to the Symbian^3 spec of devices like the Nokia N8?
One of the biggest blights on Internet forums in the last year has been a deluge of spam for commercial DVD ripping software - well, such products may just be even more redundant with Freepoc legend Malcolm Bryant's latest mini-project, DvdToSymbian, a special script for the freeware VLC (for Windows) that effectively offers a one-click route from (non-copyrighted) DVD to a nHD movie file for a S60 5th Edition smartphone. Link and quotes below.
If you've been wondering how to get started in developing serious applications for Symbian and weren't quite sure whether to knuckle down and get into the official C++-based Symbian SDK or head for the new programming wunderkind, Qt (pronounced 'cute'), then have a look at this interview with Lucian Tomuta, also embedded below. He gives an intro and then shows how easy it is to compile and test apps, right onto the phone.
Nokia has released their Q2 2010 results, reporting an operating profit of €295 million, with net sales €10.0billion (up 1% Year-on-Year). Nokia's device and service division's profits were €643 million, down 16% year on year. Margins in devices and services were 9.5% (down 2.7% YoY and down 2.6% QoQ). Converged devices sales (smartphones) were significantly up, at 24 million, compared with 16.9 million units in Q2 2009 (so up 42% YoY) and compared with 21.5 million units in Q1 2010 (up 12%, QoQ). As such, worldwide smartphone marketshare was 41%, stable sequentially and year on year. Full story and comments below.
We don't normally link to many blogger device reviews, but 'srikapardhi's write up of the Nokia N97 mini (Comes with Music edition) excels in lots of ways, in that it comes across as fresh, opinionated and pretty comprehensive. It's certainly a reminder not to write off the N97 mini after bad experiences with its larger predecessor. Oh, and be gentle with his use of English (not his first language).
Last week Qt quietly rolled out the public beta its new developer website, Qt Developer Network, which aims to provide a one-stop portal for Qt developers and consolidate resources that were previously spread across the main Qt website. It also provides a more vendor neutral destination for developers than Forum Nokia, something that could be important in helping drive adoption of the Symbian and MeeGo platforms by manufacturers other than Nokia.
For those following the HX firmware saga on the otherwise neglected Samsung i8910 HD (aka 'Omnia HD'), note that the much-anticipated HX7 firmware, codenamed 'Black Pearl', just went live (video demo below). Among many other little fixes and tying up loose ends, HX7 offers a custom utility to le t you adjust a mountain of interface settings on the fly, right down to microphone sensitivity and kinetic scrolling mechanics, without having to mess around with patch files and extra SISx installs. There's also a new 'tsunami' homescreen...
The Symbian Podcatcher project has been in development for Symbian^1 (S60 5th Edition) for some time now, but it was announced yesterday, via Twitter, that Podcatcher has finally been backported to S60 3rd Edition. Nokia made the inexplicable decision to remove Podcasting support from their Eseries S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 phones, so the availability of this could be a breath of fresh air for the enterprise-orientated platform.
Is there anything stunning about the "Orange Wednesday" application that just popped up in the UK Ovi Store? Probably not, but there is more to it though, with Qt for developers, marketing for company strategy, and a great cinema listings app for UK users. Read on...
In April, Nokia announced a raft of new phones, including the side-sliding C6. The first sign of this phone coming to market has appeared today with Play.com now taking pre-orders. Play have priced the C6 at £269.99 (UKP) which is £30 below the listed recommended retail price. As with most early orders there is an an early adopter premium. Nokia's original press release set the C6 at €220, which roughly translates to approximately £213 (UKP, including VAT) at current exchange rates. We recommend holding back for now, as lower prices should be appearing once the C6 is officially on the market.